I like how she tags Neil DeGrasse Tyson as if the funny haha tv scientist podcast man is out there writing budget proposals for CERN or Fermilab

Since you are still completely missing the basics, let’s do a little history lesson then.

The bombing of Afghanistan started in retaliation to 9/11. After initial bombing of Al-Quaeda training camps and Taliban headquarters, we asked the Afghan government to hand over Bin Laden. They said “yes we will hand him over if you agree to stop bombing”. George W’s famous response was " we don’t negotiate with terrorists". The bombing continued, and Bin Laden fled to Pakistan to survive for years.

The propagandistic idea that we were there to nation build and create a liberal democracy only entered the picture a year into the brutal bombing campaign because the US populace was turning against the war.

Then, we propped up a classic puppet government that was always destined to fail when we left. Elements of a puppet government include:

• installing a leader from a minority faction
• allowing them to violently repress members of the majority faction
• brutal violence inflicted upon dissenters
• development of natural resources for the desires of the imposing nation, a lack of sustainable development for the local people
• creating a system with very little input from local leaders, and never giving them a reason to participate or have skin in the game

The Afghan army had many huge problems. There is a plethora of news stories from 2008-2021 showing how the army is poorly trained, unmotivated, and largely drug addicted. Military leaders have been saying the entire time that this army would not stand on its own.

The Afghan army did have one strong motivation though: money. It was a mercenary army. But when the US withdrew in 2021 we stole the majority of the funds from the Afghan Central Bank (over $7bln dollars was taken by the Biden administration). Not only did this immoral act of theft cripple the Afghan economy, it destroyed their ability to pay the mercenary army.

No one who was actually paying attention expected the unpaid mercenary army to defend the puppet government once we left. Maybe, if the money kept flowing, they could have held up for a few months, but the stolen Central Bank funds ensured that was impossible.

I’m not saying “we don’t care”. Many individual people did earnestly care, and tried their best. But the military and civilian systems created by the US were never built for the benefit of the Afghan people. Your positive spin on this war is naive and ahistorical.

So your thesis is that the 1950s war was inconsequential, and then you lay the entire blame on the Kim regime and their policies?

My dude, how do you think the Kim regime became a dictatorship?

Before the 1950s war, Kim was a weak puppet leader propped up by the Soviet Union. By the end of the war, the Kim regime had dictatorial power, which persists to this day.

I did not close my eyes when America turned it’s back on the thousands of Afghans who helped the American regime during the war. The people who helped America were left resourceless and with giant targets on their back. We betrayed them.

I did not close my eyes when the flimsy and deeply flawed education system America propped up instantly failed the moment we left.

The abandonment of Afghan allies and the destruction of girl’s education in Afghanistan are just two more data points showing the deep failures of the American model of foreign intervention.

We did not spend truckloads of money trying to get a functioning system in place. A lasting functioning system was never the goal. I urge you to read into our military’s functions and objectives in Afghanistan, because you are deeply misinformed. Anyone who suggests our goals were “democracy and human rights” is obviously infected with US propaganda.

You have obviously misunderstood me.

I was comparing the United States actions in the Korean War(1950s) to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. The mass civilian bombing campaigns, complete destruction of civilian infrastructure, manmade famine, widespread preventable disease, and imposed economic isolation are very similar between the two cases.

I am not comparing current-day North Korea to current-day Gaza, and I agree with you that would not be a good analogy.

Kinda shocking to me how anyone can present such a whitewashed take on the Afghanistan War in 2025. It didn’t go to shit when we left, it was shit from the beginning.

We shortsightedly allied with brutal local warlords, and the failure at local politics blew up in our faces. We bombed 100s of villages, losing the hearts and minds of the people. We sent innocent people to be tortured in Pakistani black sites, creating a fanatical resistance willing to martyr themselves. We forcefully changed the main agricultural output from wheat to opium poppy, leading to widespread drug abuse and addiction. I could go on and on…

I’m not sure if there is a military intervention model that works, but American-style military intervention with mass civilian deaths and warcrimes from beginning to end is a proven failure.

I think the answer is simple: end the sanctions.

McDonalds and Starbucks can take down the Kim regime much more effectively than B-2 bombers and Hellfire missiles.

America already tried to save the North Koreans once. It was called the “Korean War”.

We bombed them back to the stone age, then permanently isolated them from most of the world. Despite having good reasons for the start of the war, America treated NK like Israel currently treats Gaza.

Even if North Koreans tried to forget that America bombed every hospital, every water purification plant, all the electricity production, etc; the Kim regime’s propaganda will make sure they never forget.

If we actually wanted to help those people, the first step would be removal of economic sanctions. There is no clean way to remove dictatorship, but the “Arab Spring” model is much more effective and humane than the “Afghanistan War” model.

principled men

Sadly one of Biden’s principles was blindly supporting Israel no matter what they do, even through an ongoing genocide.

He told a joke about how a former Israeli soldier from the 8207 battalion was eaten by a shark. “The shark swam past Israeli children, but it didn’t hit the children,” Schirtzer said in the video. “So even a shark can tell the difference between a child and a soldier.”

lol

No, we should strive for a candidate who is against all genocide. Let’s not compromise in advance.

There’s far too many to name, but the first things that come to mind are Collateral Murder, Haditha Massacre, and literally anytime the US military has been involved in the Gazan genocide of the past year.

No, plane rides and sleepy time are not immoral in my opinion :)

There’s probably a good argument about plane emissions and climate change tho

It seems we are in agreement then, the troops are self-interested rational actors; all of the supposed virtues are propaganda.

But I think there is a moral imperative that says “do not obey immoral orders”, and that imperative does not come with a clause that says “unless there is a pending court case”.

Or to put it another way, do you expect our enlisted men and women to uphold the high moral virtues of honor, self sacrifice, and protection of innocents?

After seeing what horrors American soldiers are capable of, I’m not holding my breath.

This is it. The real economic usecase for AI.

Anyone from Tulsi Gabbard to United Healthcare to the Israeli Occupying Force can add in a layer of AI to their operation and poof there goes the responsibility and accountability.

That may be true, but it doesn’t excuse the list at all.

My country is responsible for the majority of international violence since WWII. I find that morally unacceptable.

I make posts like this because I want my country to do better. But the sad reality is we have yet to learn our lesson. We have been aiding and abetting an ongoing Holocaust for almost two years now.

My best guess is that the Chinese government will admit fault long into the future, when most of the accountability and backlash has already faded into history.

Which is no different than how the US has handled many of the atrocities I mentioned.

When will the US acknowledge and release info on the 100s of Yemeni and Pakistani civilian targets that were destroyed by drone strike? When will the US release the warcrimes reports from the War on Terror? Does the US even still have these warcrimes reports, or were they destroyed (as whistleblowers and Amnesty International have suggested they were)?

If you can’t answer questions like these without resorting to cries of “Whataboutism”, then fuck off hypocrite.

Your comment ignores the context that the US is doing anti-Chinese propaganda here, and there is no parity.

Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot, and China was releasing PR statements on every anniversary of every US atrocity. They would still be issuing multiple statements every day.

The “pressure on the cultural zeitgeist” you speak of is just “shoot, then cry”. The victims are forgotten.